First impressions - Dead Island

It´s funny how zombies always fascinate us. Maybe it´s just that we know what to expect from them. Movies and games that involves zombies are rarely intellectually challenging and most of us don´t even seem to mind. Your main character is trapped in a random location with helpless survivors and your character is the only one who doesn´t seem to get infected by virus that turns everybody to bloodcraving zombies. That´s all you need for a working zombiesplatter game. Just put "open world survival game" in front of everything and zombie enthusiasts around the world rips their pants off. When story isn´t the most important aspect in game there has to be something else that makes the game great. Gameplay mechanics and overall design are essential for these kind of games.

By so far Dead Island has offered me a well balanced gameplay experience. First person perspective creates very claustrophobic and chaotic feel into gameplay. The gameworld is open and it´s free for exploration and you mostly run on errands given by npc:s. The game seems shallow storyvise in which I am not suprised but the overall atmosphere is great. Is it scary? Yes and no. The survival feeling and the dark corners in the game makes you feel paranoid at times. The gameworld keeps you on your toes all the time as difficulty level is increasing as you proceed. I think that this "arcade" feeling in Dead Island is taking a bit of scares away. This is obviously present only because this game is meant to play Co-operatively. Items respawn in places you´ve just looted minutes ago, car that you wrecked and left behind spawns in the place where you first took it. This eats little credibility in the survival feeling but it doesn´t take the fun away. I haven´t tried playing online Co-operative mode yet. A full review will be published soon!

So what is this all about?

Many players are considered hardcore players when they spend awfully lot of time playing first person shooters, real time strategy games, or role playing games- but initially are focusing on one particular franchise. Is being hardcore only defined by amount of gameplay? Is it the skill that it takes to take that other player down with a headshot? Or is it possible to be hardcore without losing a grasp in life and just say "I love to play videogames!"?

I want to give a gamers opinion of games to other gamers. As a gamer I am very open minded and I can play many variety of games on a quest finding the most ultimate gaming experience. Even though I have long gaming history I am not the one longing for the past and you´re not going to see me whine about how "Fallout3 is just Oblivion with guns!" If it is a good game- I´ll play a living crap out of it!
Some games has a good story, some on the otherhand doesn´t need a story to work and in some cases you´ll make your own story as you go on. The most important asset that games can offer to you is to make the time fly and to make you have a blast doing so. I´ll take a good look on the essence in games. Does it make you want to play just one more hour? Or does it end up in your shelf to gather dust?
On the right you can always see the game that I´m playing at this particular time. I might publish my current feelings about the game and discuss things that are relevant to it. After I´ve played it through I´ll release my final review- based on the thoughts I had about the gameplay, story, design and overall presentation.